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Barrie police Special Const. Ralph Hillyard was fired last week for what Greenwood calls “misconduct and unacceptable behaviour,” one day after Ontario court justice William Gorewich rebuked the officer for accessing restricted cell block video of a woman in custody that captured her using the toilet.

Barrie police Special Const. Ralph Hillyard was fired last week for what Greenwood calls “misconduct and unacceptable behaviour,” one day after Ontario court justice William Gorewich rebuked the officer for accessing restricted cell block video of a woman in custody that captured her using the toilet.
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Barrie Police chief Kimberley Greenwood says her police force has launched a full investigation into how and when its employees access cell block video of people in custody, following a scathing ruling from an Ontario judge identifying a “systemic” problem with officers viewing restricted recordings.

Barrie police Special Const. Ralph Hillyard was fired last week for what Greenwood calls “misconduct and unacceptable behaviour,” one day after Ontario court justice William Gorewich rebuked the officer for accessing restricted cell block video of a woman in custody that captured her using the toilet.

The woman, who has asked not to be identified, was working at the time as a special constable with Barrie Police and a colleague of Hillyard’s.

She was arrested on Christmas Eve, 2014, and charged with impaired driving. Gorewich threw out the charge, ruling there was a violation of her privacy and an abuse of authority by police. She was fired following her arrest.

In the weeks after she was charged, rumours were circulating throughout the police service about her conduct in the cell, and a colleague told the woman that Hillyard had accessed and viewed the video for personal purposes.

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“This means that this person who I worked with was allowed access to the video and was able to view my time in the cells, including while I was going to the bathroom,” the woman writes in her affidavit. “I cannot tell this honourable court in strong enough terms how humiliating that is for me.”

Leo Kinahan, the woman’s lawyer, said the privacy breach has had a “horrible impact” that continues today. “She is devastated,” he said.

In his decision, Gorewich says the case uncovered not just Hillyard’s “egregious conduct” but an “unacceptable attitude that permeated the ranks of the special constable corps” as it related to video access.

“It was wrongly seen as a right of the special constable. I find the public would be shocked to learn of the systemic pattern of behaviour in general and in this case in particular,” Gorewich wrote.

Hillyard testified that he accessed the video because of gossip surrounding the arrest of his colleague, including rumours that she was out of control. He claimed he viewed the video so he could quell the gossip. He denied seeing the woman on the toilet.

When asked if he accessed video of other inmates throughout his 16 years as a Barrie police employee, Hillyard said he had done so on six, 12 or more occasions. It was “common place,” Gorewich quoted Hillyard as saying in his testimony.

Gorewich ruled that Hillyard saw the “raw” video, meaning the copy that does not have the pixilation required to obscure the genitals of a person in custody while they are using the washroom.

Gorewich also criticized Barrie Police for not launching an investigation into Hillyard’s conduct sooner, calling the action against Hillyard “very late,” and suggested Hillyard’s conduct was “not an isolated event.”

But in an interview, Greenwood said Hillyard’s conduct came to the police service’s attention in January, via the Crown attorney, and that a professional standards investigation was launched “immediately.”

When asked if she believed there was a systemic problem with unauthorized access of cell block video, Greenwood said the service is “still continuing our professional standards investigation to determine that.”

“The concerns identified in the justice’s judgment — we are taking all of that information into consideration,” she said.

In the meantime, Barrie police have implemented enhanced security and approval measures for all video recordings of people in custody, the service said in a statement this week.

Greenwood reiterated that the video taping of people in custody is done in Barrie and by other police services across Ontario for the safety of both the inmates and police officers.

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